The
70-year-old jurist’s last day of work at Central Civil West was Friday, and her
retirement becomes official next Monday

A
member of the Judicial Council of California from 2012 until earlier this year,
she is a former supervising judge of the Complex Civil Litigation
Panel.

She
joined the court in 1989 as a commissioner. Elias was appointed a judge in 2000
by then-Gov. Gray Davis, and was considered for appointment to the Court of
Appeal by both Davis and successor Arnold Schwarzenegger during his tenure as
governor.

The
jurist has been active in state court administration, having served on the
Judicial Council’s CJER Governing Committee from 2002 to 2008 and as a member
of the Civil and Small Claims Advisory Committee for several years after that.

She
also served as coordination judge in suits brought against the Roman Catholic
dioceses of San Diego, San Bernardino and Monterey
regarding claims of sexual abuse of minors by members of the clergy. Among the
actions she handled on the complex litigation panel was a consolidated suit by
about 100 passengers and railroad workers and their survivors, against the
Southern California Regional Rail Authority—Metrolink—over a Jan. 26, 2005
derailment.

The
plaintiffs claimed that various acts or omissions by the agency were
contributing factors in the derailment, which occurred after Juan Manuel
Alvarez drove his Jeep Grand Cherokee onto the tracks and doused it with
gasoline. The claims were largely settled in 2009.

She
also presided over a 2003 lawsuit in which a former candidate for Los Angeles
Municipal Court judge, Vicki Roberts, sued the Los Angeles County Bar
Association, claiming that it had treated her unfairly and violated its own
rules during the candidate evaluation process, which resulted in her being
deemed “Not Qualified” for election.

Roberts
made it into a runoff, but lost to David Mintz, then a deputy district
attorney, in the last election ever held for the court. Mintz, who died in
2008, was rated “Well Qualified.”

Elias
ruled that Roberts could not sue for injunctive relief, but that her claim for
damages could go forward. The Court of Appeal disagreed, saying the action
implicated LACBA’s free speech rights and had to be stricken under the
anti-SLAPP statute.

Elias
has also served as a faculty member for numerous judicial education programs,
including the B.E. Witkin Judicial College and the New Judge Orientation. She
joined the court’s Judicial Education Program in 2005, and served as chair in
2010.

She
is a former member of the executive boards of the California Judges
Association, which she served as secretary-treasurer in 2002-2003; the Los
Angeles Chapter of the Association of Business Trial Advocates; and the
Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Litigation Section.

Elias
previously served as an adjunct professor at Loyola Law School as well.

In
2002, she received the Trial Judge of the Year Award from the Consumer
Attorneys of Los Angeles. In 2011, the American Board of Trial Advocates
honored her with the William J. Rea Jurist of the Year Award.

Elias
graduated from UC Berkeley before attending law school at USC, where she served
as an associate editor of the Southern California Law Review. She was
admitted to the State Bar in 1971 and practiced in Rolling Hills Estates until
becoming a commissioner.